Welcome Information Connoisseurs

Wednesday, December 31, 2008

Amira Hass, in a powerful Dec. 31 article for Ha'aretz, writes: "This isn't the time to speak of ethics, but of precise intelligence. Whoever gave the instructions to send 100 of our planes, piloted by the best of our boys, to bomb and strafe enemy targets in Gaza is familiar with the many schools adjacent to those targets - especially police stations. He also knew that at exactly 11:30 A.M. on Saturday, during the surprise assault on the enemy, all the children of the Strip would be in the streets - half just having finished the morning shift at school, the others en route to the afternoon shift." [http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1051028.html]

This is an important insight. Israel's control of the situation is immense. They have detailed intelligence, sattelite imagery (which they like to show off at press conferences), sophisticated guidance technology, etc. It has planned this assault for months in advance, and its leadership is ostentatiously proud of how all the branches of military and intelligence, from Shin Bet to the Southern Command, have gelled in this attack. If an assault on major public facilities is timed to coincide with children being in the streets, this is not accidental: it is intended to leave a number of children lying in their own blood, and terrorise others.

Palestinian men not counted as civilian casualties

So far, we have been given the impression in media reports that the majority of those killed have been in some sense not civilians. The UN has suggested that of its estimate of 320 deaths, about 62 are civilians... I had assumed that this was because the majority of those killed were policemen and, for some reason, we are all going along with Tel Aviv in not considering this a civilian profession. However! Apparently, I was under-estimating the creativity of the statisticians, for here's a weird thing: the UN's tally of the civilian dead "does not include civilian casualties who are men." [ABC News, Dec. 30, 2008; http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/12/30/2456334.htm]

There is no such thing as a civilian adult male in Gaza! According to this supposed scourge of Israel, any Gazan male with a bit of size on him is fair game.

Israeli power is, of course, extremely creative in determining the fields of law, morality and knowledge within which it operates. After all, when the IDF (Israeli military) slaughtered women outside a mosque in plain view not only of the public but of the cameras, it was immediately explained by Israeli spokespeople and their apologists that the women were in fact part of a cunning Hamas military operation to stop morally upright Israeli men from killing morally degenerate Palestinian men. So, they were a legitimate target.

And besides, it was hinted, why do they get to wear the veil? What are they hiding? So, if needs must, the very category of civilian, adult or child, male or female, can be conjured out of existence. And then Lt Gen Ashkenazi can come out to the podium and explain: "our intelligence shows that 1.5 million terrorists were eliminated today..."

Israel's decision to launch its devastating attack on Gaza on a Saturday was a "stroke of brilliance", the country's biggest selling paper Yediot Aharonot crowed: "the element of surprise increased the number of people who were killed." The daily Ma'ariv agreed: "We left them in shock and awe."

Of the ferocity of the assault on one of the most overcrowded and destitute corners of the earth, there is at least no question. In the bloodiest onslaught on blockaded Gaza since it was captured and occupied by Israel 41 years ago, at least 310 people were killed and more than a thousand reported injured in the first 48 hours alone.

As well as scores of ordinary police officers incinerated in a passing-out parade, at least 56 civilians were said by the UN to have died as Israel used American-supplied F-16s and Apache helicopters to attack a string of civilian targets it linked to Hamas, including a mosque, private homes and the Islamic university. Hamas military and political facilities were mostly deserted, while police stations in residential areas were teeming as they were pulverised.

As Israeli journalist Amos Harel wrote in Ha'aretz at the weekend, "little or no weight was apparently devoted to the question of harming innocent civilians", as in US operations in Iraq. Among those killed in the first wave of strikes were eight teenage students waiting for a bus and four girls from the same family in Jabaliya, aged one to 12 years old.

Anyone who doubts the impact of these atrocities among Arabs and Muslims worldwide should switch on the satellite television stations that are watched avidly across the Middle East and which - unlike their western counterparts - do not habitually sanitise the barbarity meted out in the name of multiple wars on terror.

Then, having seen a child dying in her parent's arms live on TV, consider what sort of western response there would have been to an attack on Israel, or the US or Britain for that matter, which left more than 300 dead in a couple of days.

You can be certain it would be met with the most sweeping condemnation, that the US president-elect would do a great deal more than "monitor" the situation and the British prime minister go much further than simply call for "restraint" on both sides.

But that is in fact all they did do, though the British government has since joined the call for a ceasefire. There has, of course, been no western denunciation of the Israeli slaughter - such aerial destruction is, after all, routinely called in by the US and Britain in occupied Iraq and Afghanistan.

Instead, Hamas and the Palestinians of Gaza are held responsible for what has been visited upon them. How could any government not respond with overwhelming force to the constant firing of rockets into its territory, the Israelis demand, echoed by western governments and media.

But that is to turn reality on its head. Like the West Bank, the Gaza Strip has been - and continues to be - illegally occupied by Israel since 1967. Despite the withdrawal of troops and settlements three years ago, Israel maintains complete control of the territory by sea, air and land. And since Hamas won the Palestinian elections in 2006, Israel has punished its 1.5 million people with an inhuman blockade of essential supplies, backed by the US and the European Union.

Like any occupied people, the Palestinians have the right to resist, whether they choose to exercise it or not. But there is no right of defence for an illegal occupation - there is an obligation to withdraw comprehensively. During the last seven years, 14 Israelis have been killed by mostly homemade rockets fired from the Gaza Strip, while more than 5,000 Palestinians were killed by Israel with some of the most advanced US-supplied armaments in the world. And while no rockets are fired from the West Bank, 45 Palestinians have died there at Israel's hands this year alone. The issue is of course not just the vast disparity in weapons and power, but that one side is the occupier, the other the occupied.

Hamas is likewise blamed for last month's breakdown of the six-month tahdi'a, or lull. But, in a weary reprise of past ceasefires, it was in fact sunk by Israel's assassination of six Hamas fighters in Gaza on November 5 and its refusal to lift its siege of the embattled territory as expected under an Egyptian-brokered deal. The truth is that Israel and its western sponsors have set their face against an accommodation with the Palestinians' democratic choice and have instead thrown their political weight, cash and arms behind a sustained attempt to overthrow it.

The complete failure of that approach has brought us to this week's horrific pass. Israeli leaders believe they can bomb Hamas into submission with a "decisive blow" that will establish a "new security environment" - and boost their electoral fortunes in the process before Barack Obama comes to office.

But as with Israel's disastrous assault on Lebanon two years ago - or its earlier siege of Yasser Arafat's PLO in Beirut in 1982 - it is a strategy that cannot succeed. Even more than Hezbollah, Hamas's appeal among Palestinians and beyond doesn't derive from its puny infrastructure, or even its Islamist ideology, but its spirit of resistance to decades of injustice. So long as it remains standing in the face of this onslaught, its influence will only be strengthened. And if it is not with rockets, its retaliation is bound to take other forms, as Hamas's leader Khalid Mish'al made clear at the weekend.

Meanwhile, the US and Israeli-backed Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas has been further diminished by being seen as having colluded in the Israeli assault on his own people - as has the already rock-bottom credibility of the Egyptian regime. What is now taking place in the Palestinian territories is a futile crime in which the US and its allies are deeply complicit - and unless Obama is prepared to change course, it is likely to have bitter consequences that will touch us all.

JERUSALEM, Dec. 29 -- Trapped in the rubble, Iman Balousha, dressed in her green pajamas, said she could hear her sisters' cries. "Mother! Mother! Where is my mother? Pull me out!" Their muffled voices slipped through the toppled bricks.

Early Monday, an Israeli airstrike on the Jabalya refugee camp in the Gaza Strip destroyed the family's house, located next to the Emad Aqeel mosque, the intended target, which was also flattened. Rescuers tried frantically to save the girls. Iman was lucky: She was half-buried in the debris.

One by one, the cries stopped, Iman recalled in an interview. She could see the leg of her 4-year-old sister, Jawaher, whom her family called Ayah. She could touch her hair. But minutes later, Ayah stopped breathing.

"I've lost five sisters," Iman, 16, said at a relative's house Monday evening, her soft voice fading. Tears slid down her face. Her mother, Samira, held her 16-month-old son, whose face was bruised and specked with dried blood.

"Does my 12-days-old baby have a rocket with her?" Samira demanded. "Or my son, does he have a missile with him? Or did my daughters have AK-47s beside them? Why did they target them?" The five daughters who died were ages 4 to 17.

Concerns mounted over the growing toll on civilians in the Gaza Strip as Israeli jets carried out airstrikes for the third straight day. Many of the casualties have been civilians who live around targets in the densely populated strip. The United Nations on Monday said at least 57 Palestinian civilians have been killed since the Israeli offensive began Saturday, based on visits to hospitals and medical facilities. Officials described that number as conservative.

In total, over three days, 364 Palestinians have been killed and hundreds more wounded, said Gaza medical officials, in the deadliest wave of attacks in Gaza since Israel captured control of the seaside territory from Egypt in 1967. Hamas has retaliated, firing a barrage of rockets into southern Israel that has killed four Israelis.

"The Israelis say they are targeting Hamas, but they are targeting the innocent kids who are sleeping," Samira said.

On Monday, the U.N. Relief and Works Agency said an Israeli missile targeted policemen standing near a Gaza government building, across the street from a U.N. training center. Eight students, ages 18 to 20, were killed while waiting for a U.N. bus to take them home, and 19 were injured. Eight remained in critical condition Monday, the agency said in a statement.

"They are tragic illustrations of how civilians are so vulnerable in this conflict, when such overwhelming means of force is used in such a tight and densely populated part of the world," said Christopher Gunness, a U.N. spokesman, referring to the deaths of the students and Iman's sisters.

On Monday, U.N. officials complained to the Israeli government after a U.N. building was severely damaged by two missiles targeting an adjacent guesthouse used by the Hamas government in Gaza.

Human rights groups demanded that Israel and Egypt open up humanitarian corridors into the Gaza Strip for the delivery of aid. Gazans are facing shortages of medical personnel, medicine, food, electricity and water, aid workers said.

"The horrific death toll risks growing due to the unavailability of adequate medical care for the hundreds of injured," Amnesty International said in a statement, appealing to Israel and Egypt to allow the Palestinian wounded to be treated in their countries. "It is utterly unacceptable for Israel to continue to purposefully deprive 1.5 million people of food and other basic necessities."

Seeking Comfort in Their House

When the airstrikes began Saturday, Samira and her nine children were at her father's house. They decided to return to their own house because "there was no difference anywhere in Gaza," Samira said. Her eldest daughter, Tahrir, she said, remarked that she would "rather live all together or die all together."

So they returned to their house. They felt some comfort living next to a mosque, which would not be targeted, they thought.

At 10 p.m. Sunday, Samira said goodnight to her seven daughters. They all slept in the same bedroom in the tiny house without electricity in this sprawling refugee camp. Before she left the room, she doused the kerosene lamp. "I was worried that an airstrike would rattle the house and the lamp would fall and burn down the room," Samira said.

Then she and her husband, Anwar, took their son, Muhammed, and baby daughter, Bara, to their room.

The mosque next door was an Israeli target. It was named after Emad Aqeel, a Hamas member who died fighting Israel. Hamas controls many mosques across Gaza, which serve as key venues for winning popular support.

Samira and Anwar recalled waking up to Bara and Muhammed's screams. They were covered in rubble. Some bricks had struck the boy's face; the girl had been tossed from the bed. Anwar remembers telling his wife to utter shehada, the prayer Muslims say before they die.

Somehow they managed to push away the rubble and move through the darkness. Neighbors were trying to remove the debris. Samira grabbed Muhammed and handed him to a rescuer; Anwar picked up Bara and stumbled outside to the street. Samira went to her daughters' room.

"I found a mountain of concrete over my daughters," Samira said. "I could do nothing. So I ran out in the street, screaming."

" 'There are seven girls in the room,' I yelled. 'Please go and bring them out.' " Neighbors took her to a hospital. A relative told her all the girls were alive.

Inside the room, Iman struggled to escape. She cried for help. Finally the rescuers heard her and pulled her out. "Where is my father? Where is my mother?" she asked. A few minutes later, her sister Samah, 10, also emerged.

"I didn't see my other sisters until I was saying goodbye to them at the morgue," Iman said, sobbing.

As she spoke in her relatives' house, Samira looked at her baby son's bruised face and shooed away the flies around his head. "I hope the Israelis' heart will be harmed like they hurt my heart," she said.

Iman's grandmother was there. Suddenly, another airstrike hit nearby, the sounds crashing through the house.

"Please, God, save our children," the grandmother screamed.

'Why Me? Why My Family?'

Anwar Balousha entered his shattered house Monday evening. Bruises covered his face. His head was wrapped in a bandage. He could barely walk. With the help of his relatives, he hobbled around the rubble. Water dripped from a still-intact ceiling.

In his daughters' room, he found a framed verse from the Koran. It read: "Nothing will happen to us but the things that God wrought for us."

It used to hang above his daughters' bed.

Standing there, Anwar remembered how Tahrir excelled at her studies. He struggled to understand how a poor unemployed day laborer could suffer so much in one night.

"I don't have anything to do with any Palestinian faction. I have nothing to do with Hamas or anyone. I am just an ordinary person."

"Why me? Why my family?" he asked no one in particular. He sobbed. "I have lost Tahrir, Ikram, Samur, Dina and Ayah. I have lost five daughters. I loved them all." He looked around.

Monday, December 29, 2008

As so often, the term 'terrorism' has proved a rhetorical smokescreen under cover of which the strong crush the weak

by Nir Rosenhttp://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/dec/29/gaza-hamas-israel

December 29, 2008

Once again, the Israelis bomb the starving and imprisoned population of Gaza. The world watches the plight of 1.5 million Gazans live on TV and online; the western media largely justify the Israeli action...

The powerful – whether Israel, America, Russia or China – will always describe their victims' struggle as terrorism, but the destruction of Chechnya, the ethnic cleansing of Palestine, the slow slaughter of the remaining Palestinians, the American occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan – with the tens of thousands of civilians it has killed … these will never earn the title of terrorism, though civilians were the target and terrorising them was the purpose.

Counterinsurgency, now popular again among in the Pentagon, is another way of saying the suppression of national liberation struggles. Terror and intimidation are as essential to it as is winning hearts and minds.

Normative rules are determined by power relations. Those with power determine what is legal and illegal. They besiege the weak in legal prohibitions to prevent the weak from resisting. For the weak to resist is illegal by definition. Concepts like terrorism are invented and used normatively as if a neutral court had produced them, instead of the oppressors. The danger in this excessive use of legality actually undermines legality, diminishing the credibility of international institutions such as the United Nations. It becomes apparent that the powerful, those who make the rules, insist on legality merely to preserve the power relations that serve them or to maintain their occupation and colonialism.

Attacking civilians is the last, most desperate and basic method of resistance when confronting overwhelming odds and imminent eradication. The Palestinians do not attack Israeli civilians with the expectation that they will destroy Israel. The land of Palestine is being stolen day after day; the Palestinian people is being eradicated day after day. As a result, they respond in whatever way they can to apply pressure on Israel.

Colonial powers use civilians strategically, settling them to claim land and dispossess the native population, be they Indians in North America or Palestinians in what is now Israel and the Occupied Territories. When the native population sees that there is an irreversible dynamic that is taking away their land and identity with the support of an overwhelming power, then they are forced to resort to whatever methods of resistance they can.

Not long ago, 19-year-old Qassem al-Mughrabi, a Palestinian man from Jerusalem drove his car into a group of soldiers at an intersection. "The terrorist", as the Israeli newspaper Haaretz called him, was shot and killed. In two separate incidents last July, Palestinians from Jerusalem also used vehicles to attack Israelis. The attackers were not part of an organisation. Although those Palestinian men were also killed, senior Israeli officials called for their homes to be demolished.

In a separate incident, Haaretz reported that a Palestinian woman blinded an Israeli soldier in one eye..."The terrorist was arrested by security forces," the paper said. An occupied citizen attacks an occupying soldier, and she is the terrorist?

In September, Bush spoke at the United Nations. No cause could justify the deliberate taking of human life, he said. Yet the US has killed thousands of civilians in airstrikes on populated areas. When you drop bombs on populated areas knowing there will be some "collateral" civilian damage, but accepting it as worth it, then it is deliberate. When you impose sanctions, as the US did on Saddam era Iraq, that kill hundreds of thousands, and then say their deaths were worth it, as secretary of state Albright did, then you are deliberately killing people for a political goal. When you seek to "shock and awe", as president Bush did, when he bombed Iraq, you are engaging in terrorism.

Just as the traditional American cowboy film presented white Americans under siege, with Indians as the aggressors, which was the opposite of reality, so, too, have Palestinians become the aggressors and not the victims. Beginning in 1948, 750,000 Palestinians were deliberately cleansed and expelled from their homes, and hundreds of their villages were destroyed, and their land was settled by colonists, who went on to deny their very existence and wage a 60-year war against the remaining natives and the national liberation movements the Palestinians established around the world.

Every day, more of Palestine is stolen, more Palestinians are killed. To call oneself an Israeli Zionist is to engage in the dispossession of entire people. It is not that, qua Palestinians, they have the right to use any means necessary, it is because they are weak. The weak have much less power than the strong, and can do much less damage. The Palestinians would not have ever bombed cafes or used home-made missiles if they had tanks and airplanes. It is only in the current context that their actions are justified, and there are obvious limits....Can an Iraqi be justified in attacking the United States? After all, his country was attacked without provocation, and destroyed, with millions of refugees created, hundreds of thousands of dead. And this, after 12 years of bombings and sanctions, which killed many and destroyed the lives of many others.

I could argue that all Americans are benefiting from their country's exploits without having to pay the price, and that, in today's world, the imperial machine is not merely the military but a military-civilian network. And I could also say that Americans elected the Bush administration twice and elected representatives who did nothing to stop the war, and the American people themselves did nothing. From the perspective of an American, or an Israeli, or other powerful aggressors, if you are strong, everything you do is justifiable, and nothing the weak do is legitimate. It's merely a question of what side you choose: the side of the strong or the side of the weak.

Israel and its allies in the west and in Arab regimes such as Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia have managed to corrupt the PLO leadership, to suborn them with the promise of power at the expense of liberty for their people, creating a first – a liberation movement that collaborated with the occupier. Israeli elections are coming up and, as usual, these elections are accompanied by war to bolster the candidates. You cannot be prime minister of Israel without enough Arab blood on your hands.

An Israeli general has threatened to set Gaza back decades, just as they threatened to set Lebanon back decades in 2006. As if strangling Gaza and denying its people fuel, power or food had not set it back decades already.

The democratically elected Hamas government was targeted for destruction from the day it won the elections in 2006. The world told the Palestinians that they cannot have democracy, as if the goal was to radicalise them further and as if that would not have a consequence. Israel claims it is targeting Hamas's military forces. This is not true. It is targeting Palestinian police forces and killing them, including some such as the chief of police, Tawfiq Jaber, who was actually a former Fatah official who stayed on in his post after Hamas took control of Gaza. What will happen to a society with no security forces? What do the Israelis expect to happen when forces more radical than Hamas gain power?

A Zionist Israel is not a viable long-term project and Israeli settlements, land expropriation and separation barriers have long since made a two state solution impossible. There can be only one state in historic Palestine. In coming decades, Israelis will be confronted with two options. Will they peacefully transition towards an equal society, where Palestinians are given the same rights, à la post-apartheid South Africa? Or will they continue to view democracy as a threat? If so, one of the peoples will be forced to leave. Colonialism has only worked when most of the natives have been exterminated. But often, as in occupied Algeria, it is the settlers who flee. Eventually, the Palestinians will not be willing to compromise and seek one state for both people. Does the world want to further radicalise them?

Do not be deceived: the persistence of the Palestine problem is the main motive for every anti-American militant in the Arab world and beyond. But now the Bush administration has added Iraq and Afghanistan as additional grievances. America has lost its influence on the Arab masses, even if it can still apply pressure on Arab regimes. But reformists and elites in the Arab world want nothing to do with America...

Sunday, December 28, 2008

Editor's note: Egypt is a dictatorship. "Democracy" is a joke there, yet it enjoys full US support and American taxpayer largesse because the Egyptian regime - despite much official safety valve hot air to the contrary - is a satrapy of the Israeli state. The Bush regime's talk of encouraging "democracy" in the Middle East is a farce. No matter how tyrannical an Arab state (Jordan, Saudi Arabia), if it covertly cooperates with Zionism, that is the sole criterion for a US buttress of a corrupt regime.

Egypt stabbed Hamas in back

Egypt collaborated with Israel by deliberately misleading Hamas and allowing Tel Aviv to deal a blow to the movement, a report claims. Citing diplomatic sources, the London-based daily al-Quds al-Arabi reported Sunday [Dec. 28] that Egyptian Intelligence Minister Omar Suleiman had deceived Hamas into believing that Israel would not launch an attack on the Gaza Strip in the near future. According to the report, the misinformation lured Hamas into not evacuating its security compounds and headquarters.

Suleiman convinced a number of Arab leaders that Israel was intending to launch only limited operations into the Gaza Strip to mount pressure on Hamas ahead of signing a new ceasefire agreement, the report added. Egypt told Hamas on Friday evening that Israel had agreed to begin talks on a ceasefire and would not attack Gaza before Cairo ended its diplomatic efforts, the daily quoted Hamas sources close to former Palestinian Foreign Minister Mahmoud al-Zahar as saying. The report added that Egypt's assurance persuaded Hamas not to evacuate its security compounds in accordance with routine procedures in place after any threats by Israel.

"Today... the essential calculation... has been blatantly revealed.... One Israeli life is worth a hundred Palestinian lives."

By John Berger12.27.2008 | http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org

"We are now spectators of the latest - and perhaps penultimate - chapter of the 60 year old conflict between Israel and the Palestinian people. About the complexities of this tragic conflict billions of words have been pronounced, defending one side or the other.

Today, in face of the Israeli attacks on Gaza, the essential calculation, which was always covertly there, behind this conflict, has been blatantly revealed. The death of one Israeli victim justifies the killing of a hundred Palestinians. One Israeli life is worth a hundred Palestinian lives.

This is what the Israeli State and the world media more or less - with marginal questioning - mindlessly repeat. And this claim, which has accompanied and justified the longest Occupation of foreign territories in 20th C. European history, is viscerally racist. That the Jewish people should accept this, that the world should concur, that the Palestinians should submit to it - is one of history's ironic jokes. There's no laughter anywhere. We can, however, refute it, more and more vocally. Let's do so."

John Berger is an English art critic, painter, and novelist. Two years ago, he launched an appeal for worldwide cultural boycott against the Israeli state: John Berger, "We Must Speak Out," Guardian, 15 December 2006; and "John Berger and 93 Other Authors, Film-makers, Musicians and Performers Call for a Cultural Boycott of Israel," Ramallah, 15 December 2006.

The latest Israeli war crime in Gaza reminds me of a central idea of a book I hope to one day complete on the Cryptocracy's great game with Islam, in this case pertaining to the morality message of World War II.

In World War II the Allies conducted themselves, as Franklin Roosevelt stated, as though the entire German people were collectively involved in a conspiracy against civilization. With this rationale in hand, the Allies proceeded to terrorize the German people as no people have ever been terrorized by a state. Every instrument of the terrorist was employed: assassination, bombing and mass murder. Rather than being condemned or prosecuted, the Allied terrorism was characterized as history's one, certain "Good War" and I will not exhaust you with a litany of the other sterling sobriquets with which moralists and alleged humanitarians have laurel-wreathed the Allied bloodbath.

The Muslims, along with the rest of the world, observed the Allied morality play and in the midst of the West's media blitz have had a center seat at all of the movies, documentaries and official commemorations of the heroism and goodness of the Allied attacks on civilians, on the basis that the Germans, including German women, children, infants and the unborn of pregnant German mothers, were occupiers, colonizers, aggressors and exterminators who got what they deserved.

I have witnessed no serious attempt anywhere across the spectrum of western public opinion to overthrow World War II Allied morality. If anything, it has become more extravagant in its claims of moral purity and ethical crusading.

The Palestinians, having learned the lesson of World War II as perpetually imparted by Hollywood and New York, identify the Israelis as Nazis who colonize, occupy and yes, exterminate -- in so far as they are able in a media age where little is done in secret that escapes hand-held video cameras and Internet blogs.

For example, in the Gaza ghetto, for years the Israelis have forced 1.5 million people to go without food, medical care, heating fuel, electricity, clean water and facilities and infrastructure necessary to life or even a half-way decent standard of living. In response to these Nazi-like actions by the Zionists, Hamas fires primitive rockets at Zionist civilians. The West tends to see only the Hamas rockets, not the record of Israeli mass murder, dispossession and occupation which led to the rocket fire.

According to the Allied logic of World War II, Hamas is completely in the right and nothing Hamas does to the Nazi-Israelis is wrong; in fact, the Hamas rocket fire must be classed, by Allied logic, as a step on the path toward civilization and against barbarism.

This writer believes that attacks on civilians are always wrong, whether they be German, Palestinian or Israeli. But the West can't have it both ways: it can't teach, as it has for generations, that one may burn and slaughter German civilians righteously, without restraint of any kind, and then celebrate that terrible carnage for the next six decades in every possible forum, while telling Hamas and the Palestinians that they dare not imitate the Allied/World War II example. Muslims have no regard for western hypocrisy and they will hurl themselves at the Israelis as the Allies hurled themselves at the Germans and this will probably continue for as long as the Allied slaughter of Germans is held to be the gold standard of ethical conduct in war.

Those who uphold the myth of Allied morality ought to uphold Palestinian resistance to Israeli conquest and slaughter. In view of this, the Israeli-Nazi attacks today in Gaza will only further enflame the resolve of Arabs and Muslims throughout the world to resist by any means -- including guns and bombs -- the "collectively guilty" 21st century Israeli people, just as the Allies murdered, burned and bombed the "collectively guilty" German people of the 1940s. Few in the West today view the Allies as terrorists and few in Islamic countries view Hamas as terrorist.

The next "Good War" has only just begun.

Hoffman is co-author of The Israeli Holocaust Against the Palestinians. His latest work is Judaism Discovered: A Study of the Anti-Biblical Religion of Racism, Self-Worship, Superstition and Deceit, now in its second printing, in spite of having been banned by Amazon.com (the only book about Judaism which has that distinction). Ordering information is here: http://www.revisionisthistory.org/page1/news.html

Saturday, December 20, 2008

Editor's note: The technology that made movies possible was invented by Thomas Edison. Cinema was created and raised to an art by D.W. Griffith. Both men were gentiles. They quickly lost control over their invention/art form, however.

How Jewish is Hollywood?

by Joel Steinjstein@latimescolumnists.com

Los Angeles Times, December 19, 2008

I have never been so upset by a poll in my life. Only 22% of Americans now believe "the movie and television industries are pretty much run by Jews," down from nearly 50% in 1964. The Anti-Defamation League, which released the poll results last month, sees in these numbers a victory against stereotyping. Actually, it just shows how dumb America has gotten. Jews totally run Hollywood.

...As a proud Jew, I want America to know about our accomplishment. Yes, we control Hollywood. Without us, you'd be flipping between "The 700 Club" and "Davey and Goliath" on TV all day... I don't care if Americans think we're running the news media, Hollywood, Wall Street or the government. I just care that we get to keep running them.

Friday, December 19, 2008

It's not hard to see that W. Mark Felt, the "Deep Throat" informer who passed away yesterday and who helped blow the cover off Watergate, was motivated not by noble Constitutional motives (in 1980 Felt was convicted of violating the Constitutional rights of Americans), but by rage at President Richard Nixon for failing to nominate him to head the FBI.

At Felt's trial, Nixon, who knew that Felt had informed to some degree but did not suspect that he was "Deep Throat," testified on behalf of the man who had betrayed him.

Felt then spent the next twenty-five years denying that he was "Deep Throat." Observe the Talmudic device by which the New York Times exculpates' Felt's decades of lies:

"Mr. Felt then disappeared from public view for a quarter of a century, denying unequivocally, time and again, that he had been Deep Throat. It was a lie he told to serve what he believed to be a higher truth."

Like Mr. Felt, the Zionist-Talmudic New York Times lies by omission or commission when the lie will "serve a higher truth."

***

W. Mark Felt, Watergate Deep Throat, Dies at 95

By Tim Weiner, NY Times, December 19, 2008

W. Mark Felt, who was the No. 2 official at the F.B.I. when he helped bring down President Richard M. Nixon by resisting the Watergate cover-up and becoming Deep Throat, the most famous anonymous source in American history, died Thursday Dec. 18. He was 95 and lived in Santa Rosa, Calif....In 2005, Mr. Felt revealed that he was the one who had secretly supplied Bob Woodward of The Washington Post with crucial leads in the Watergate affair in the early 1970s. His decision to unmask himself, in an article in Vanity Fair, ended a guessing game that had gone on for more than 30 years....Without Mr. Felt, there might not have been a Watergate...

Like Nixon, Mr. Felt authorized illegal break-ins in the name of national security and then received the absolution of a presidential pardon. Their lives were intertwined in ways only they and a few others knew. Nixon cursed his name when he learned early on that Mr. Felt was providing aid to the enemy in the wars of Watergate. The conversation was recorded in the Oval Office and later made public. “We know what’s leaked, and we know who leaked it,” Nixon’s chief of staff, H. R. Haldeman, told the president on Oct. 19, 1972, four months after a team of washed-up Central Intelligence Agency personnel hired by the White House was caught trying to wiretap the Democratic Party’s national offices at the Watergate complex.

“Now why the hell would he do that?” the president asked in a wounded tone.

No one, including Mr. Felt, ever answered that question in full...Mr. Felt had expected to be named to succeed J. Edgar Hoover, who had run the bureau for 48 years and died in May 1972. The president instead chose a politically loyal Justice Department official, L. Patrick Gray III...The choice infuriated Mr. Felt...On July 1, 1971, Hoover promoted Mr. Felt to deputy associate director, the third in command at the headquarters, beneath Hoover’s right-hand man and longtime companion, Clyde A. Tolson. With both of his superiors in poor health, Mr. Felt increasingly took effective command of the daily work of the F.B.I. When Mr. Hoover died and Mr. Tolson retired, he saw his path to power cleared....But Nixon denied him, and he seethed with frustrated ambition in the summer of 1972. One evening that summer, a few weeks after the Watergate break-in, Mr. Woodward, then a neophyte newspaperman, knocked on Mr. Felt’s door in pursuit of the story. Mr. Felt decided to co-operate with him and set up an elaborate system of espionage techniques for clandestine meetings with Mr. Woodward....

Within weeks, Mr. Felt steered The (Washington) Post to a story establishing that the Watergate break-in was part of “a massive campaign of political spying and sabotage” directed by the White House. For the next eight months, he did his best to keep the newspaper on the trail, largely by providing, on “deep background,” anonymous confirmation of facts reporters had gathered from others. The Post’s managing editor, Howard Simons, gave him his famous pseudonym, taken from the pornographic movie then in vogue...

While Watergate was seething, Mr. Felt authorized nine illegal break-ins at the homes of friends and relatives of members of the Weather Underground, a violent left-wing splinter group. The people he chose as targets had committed no crimes. The F.B.I. had no search warrants. He later said he ordered the break-ins because national security required it.

In a criminal trial, Mr. Felt was convicted in November 1980 of conspiring to violate the constitutional rights of Americans. Nixon, who had denounced him in private for leaking Watergate secrets, testified on his behalf. Called by the prosecution, he told the jury that presidents and by extension their officers had an inherent right to conduct illegal searches in the name of national security.

“As Deep Throat, Felt helped establish the principle that our highest government officials are subject to the Constitution and the laws of the land,” the prosecutor, John W. Nields, wrote in The Washington Post in 2005. “Yet when it came to the Weather Underground bag jobs, he seems not to have been aware that this same principle applied to him.”

Seven months after the conviction, President Ronald Reagan pardoned Mr. Felt. Then 67, Mr. Felt celebrated the decision as one of great symbolic value. “This is going to be the biggest shot in the arm for the intelligence community for a long time,” he said. After the pardon, Nixon sent him a congratulatory bottle of Champagne.

...By June 1973, Mr. Felt was forced out of the F.B.I. Soon he came under investigation by some of the same agents he had supervised...

Mr. Felt then disappeared from public view for a quarter of a century, denying unequivocally, time and again, that he had been Deep Throat. It was a lie he told to serve what he believed to be a higher truth...

***

Hoffman is the author of the underground bestseller, Judaism Discovered: A Study of the Anti-Biblical Religion of Racism, Self-Worship, Superstition and Deceit, now in its second printing, in spite having been banned by Amazon.com (the only book about Judaism which has that distinction).

Wednesday, December 17, 2008

Excerpt: "Any and all collateral damage in the form of casualties to friends, relatives, or anyone connected to the lives of these terrorists should be swiftly ignored...In terms of Jewish law, I think that the issue is probably clear. While no army should go out of its way to harm a civilian population in times of war, during the legitimate pursuit of an enemy that has instigated an attack against its people, a nation may defend itself with whatever means necessary, even if it includes causing death to civilians.."

Some of the greatest discoveries of medical science, most notably penicillin, have been made by sheer accident. It is a signal tragedy of our times that, in the all too conspicuous absence of competent statesmanship among the leadership of democracies around the world... the solutions to certain international security issues must also be discovered by accident.

About six months ago, there was an article published in the New York Times about an incident in Afghanistan where the U.S. military, while attempting to take out a certain Taliban terrorist, dropped a bomb on a tent that was occupied by members of his extended family, killing several women and children. The particular terrorist that was being hunted was not home at the time, although there were several others that were part of the same terrorist network who were also killed.

This story ostensibly was published for the purpose of demonstrating the “horrors” of warfare, focusing primarily on the women and children in the tent who were killed, by all accounts of the U.S. military spokespeople, unintentionally. In our dangerous age of political tentativeness and compromised militaries, however, there is an overwhelming probability that even top-ranking U.S. military commanders were unaware that they may have accidentally stumbled upon the solution to international terror.

I’ll never forget how, during the last Lebanon war with Hezbollah, an Orthodox Jewish Russian immigrant who had survived Stalin approached me, gesturing with his hand while repeating the word “tzetlach” (“notes” or “letters” in Yiddish). He was referring to the pieces of paper which were dropped by the Israeli Air Force over Lebanon warning civilians of the bombs that were about to be dropped. In the process, the Hezbollah terrorists were also warned, which may have allowed them to escape to the north in large numbers and ultimately force Israel to belatedly engage its ground troops, leading to numerous casualties and the loss of the war.

“Did Stalin drop tzetlach when he bombed Berlin during the Second World War?” my Russian immigrant friend asked, obviously comparing the militant, pro-Hezbollah Lebanese civilians to the citizens of Germany during the Holocaust. The United States, it seems, did in fact originally institute the practice of dropping leaflets over an enemy population, as it did before it bombed Dresden and Berlin, but apparently Stalin had his own ideas. Israel was apparently afraid to stray from the U.S. precedent even if it meant risking the loss of a war.

In terms of Jewish law, I think that the issue is probably clear. While no army should go out of its way to harm a civilian population in times of war, during the legitimate pursuit of an enemy that has instigated an attack against its people, a nation may defend itself with whatever means necessary, even if it includes causing death to civilians. Those who are inclined to issue knee-jerk gasps to this common sense state of affairs that is etched in the Mosaic law are probably easily forgetful of the fact that Muslim countries are routinely targeting innocent civilians via their terrorist proxies and leaving the standing armies of nations alone. This is more or less what recently occurred in Mumbai, India.

Although the attack had all the hallmarks of Al Qaeda penetration into local Pakistani Muslim terror groups, there is ample evidence of complicity by the Pakistani Intelligence Service (known as the ISI.) which has a long and well-known history of facilitating acts of terror in Indian-held Kashmir. Reports indicate that a rogue element of the ISI recently forged a link with a local terrorist commander linked to Al Qaeda, which then embarked upon a plan to target Westerners in Mumbai.

The Mumbai attack signifies a change of course for Al Qaeda, which until this point had refrained from attacking India because of India’s prior course of neutrality vis-à-vis Islam’s conflicts with the West, and because of the need for its use of India as a transfer point to fly undetected in and out of Pakistan and the Afghan regions. This perhaps explains in part why India’s naval security was in such a state of low awareness and why there was not a perceived need to update their police department’s anti-terrorist training. (The Jewish Center was allegedly targeted specifically for attack for reasons stemming from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.)

Whatever the level or degree of the Pakistani government’s complicity in the attack that is ultimately proven to have taken place, the fact is that this operation could not have been accomplished without assistance from Pakistani Intelligence. This factor makes the Mumbai attack as much of an attack on India’s sovereignty as it was an attack on its civilians and foreign visitors. As such, it cries out for some type of retaliatory attack by the Indian government.

Aside from India, however, the attack on the foreign nationals of Israel, the United States, and Great Britain by proxy also constitutes an act of war against these countries and therefore legitimizes the infiltration of Pakistani territory for the purpose of pursuing the aggressors. While a generalized war with Pakistan should not be contemplated or pursued, it may be unavoidable, depending upon the vigilance with which Pakistan seeks to defend the terrorists within its borders.

The retaliation that is undertaken should strike hard at the training bases, madrassa schools, and homes of all the properly identified terrorist commanders and fellow terrorists of those identified in the attack, in a series of sustained surprise attacks over a period of time that is aimed at total eradication of the entire network that coordinated this attack. Any and all collateral damage in the form of casualties to friends, relatives, or anyone connected to the lives of these terrorists should be swiftly ignored. Public opinion and what is written in the newspapers should also be ignored by nations seeking to avenge the death of its innocent civilians.

When terrorists undertake to hide behind a sovereign government and to attempt to hide within its borders, it becomes the responsibility of that government to take swift action to flush them out and to neutralize them. Pakistan has obviously not done this, and is itself responsible for failing to purge itself of rogue commanders who facilitated the carnage in Mumbai. It must now step aside and let the foreign governments whose citizens have been mercilessly attacked take the proper course of action. George W. Bush certainly knows how to do it, and if his heart will be in the right place, so does Barack Obama.

As for the Islamic terrorists themselves, there has been a universal ineptitude in understanding their mentalities and how they work. Primarily because of leftist leaders and public sympathy with revolutionary mindsets, which have in cancerous fashion infiltrated the efficient workings of Western governments and Israel, the tactics that are necessary to defeat Islamic terror have been suppressed and discarded as politically incorrect. Many will remember how before Shimon Peres encouraged Prime Minister Rabin to embark on his infamous peace process with Arafat, the latter advocated “breaking the bones” of Arab rioters in the West Bank and Gaza as a means of putting down the intifada. Those means were apparently used for a period of time by Rabin, with much success, until his government decided to embark on a seriously unwise course of conciliation with premeditated and avowed murderers.

President Bush also delivered a setback to his own war on terror when, in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, he labeled Islam a peaceful religion that had been hijacked by radical elements. By making that statement, the president all but rejected the possibility of taking drastic action to eliminate entire terrorist networks that would of necessity cause the mass deaths of other potential operatives, and those others clandestinely associated with the actual terrorists, who provide means of support.

Contrary to all attention that has been given to the Muslim shaheed’s pursuit of the 72 virgins, the idea of martyrdom in Islam is really more of an exaggerated spin-off of good old fashioned American machismo and hero worship. A Muslim will seek martyrdom in order to bring honor to himself and to his family, just as a Muslim will kill others even within his own family to prevent or offset a similar association with dishonor or shame. If he knows that his family will all be killed, and there will be nobody left after him to claim that honor, he will be left with little reason to pursue his murderous mission.

One of the main daggers which Israel has thrust into its own heart was the government’s decision to abort the practice of demolishing the homes of terrorists. The prospect of rendering his own family homeless and desperate served to deter a potential terrorist from killing himself and anybody else by reducing the honor and machismo associated with the act. The notion of the 72 virgins is only a reward for the achievement of an act that brings honor to himself and his family, but there is nothing honorable in Islam about bringing harm to one’s family.

Perhaps this is the underlying reason why, since the war of terror has begun, we have been unsuccessful in tracking down Bin Laden. And if, as many feared before the presidential election, Barack Obama is really sympathetic to the Muslims radicals, it might also explain why his main promise in continuing Bush’s war on terror was to pursue this archterrorist through the hills of Pakistan. If Bin Laden is killed and hence martyred, it will only bring honor to himself and his family, who will be very much intact and alive. That will only give rise to more militant imams and more terrorist leaders.

Moreover, the only way to deal with Islamic terrorists is the same way in which they deal with their victims. Muslims believe in the literal interpretation of the Biblical doctrine of an eye for an eye, and they do not have respect for anything perceived as a lesser standard of justice. They killed our innocents, and unless we kill theirs, they will go on killing ours. The Torah, however, preaches a doctrine which, if implemented by the West, could finally put an end to all Islamic terror: If somebody is coming to kill you, rise up and kill him first. [End quote]

(NEW YORK, NY, 12/12/08) - The New York chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-NY) today called on leaders of the Jewish community in that state to repudiate a columnist for a Jewish newspaper who called for the killing of “innocent” Muslims.

In a commentary in the December 12 issue of the 5 Towns Jewish Times, titled, “The Appropriate Response to Islamic Terror,” Lawrence Kulak wrote:

“Moreover, the only way to deal with Islamic terrorists is the same way in which they deal with their victims. Muslims believe in the literal interpretation of the Biblical doctrine of an eye for an eye, and they do not have respect for anything perceived as a lesser standard of justice. They killed our innocents, and unless we kill theirs, they will go on killing ours.”

SEE: The Appropriate Response to Islamic Terror (Pages 59-61)

“Such inflammatory comments have no place in reasoned public discourse,” said CAIR-NY Community Affairs Director Faiza N. Ali. “Calls for violence against innocent civilians of any faith should face universal rejection and repudiation by religious leaders.”

CAIR-NY and the Muslim Public Affairs Council, New York City office (MPAC-NYC) recently recommended that interfaith exchanges take place between Indian Hindus and Muslims in the wake of the Mumbai attacks.

Monday, December 15, 2008

O little town of Bethlehem ,How still we see thee lie!A wall is laid where tourists stayed,And tanks go rolling by.And in thy dark streets shinethNo cheerful Christmas light;The grief and fears of four sad yearsAre met in thee tonight.

How silently, how silentlyThe world regards it all,As now thy heart is torn apartBy Israel's ghetto wall.They terrorize a people -A war crime and a sin;Their winding "fence" can make no sense;Revenge can still get in.

O promised child of Bethlehem,Cast down the iron cage,The walls of hate that separateAnd harden and enrage;Bring justice and make equal;Come down from far above;And come to birth upon this earth,As hope and peace and love.

ONCE IN ROYAL DAVID'S CITY

Once in royal David's cityStood some big Israeli tanks;Mothers giving birth to babiesMet with checkpoints and roadbanks.Holy land was all defiledAs a bullet killed a child.

Round the ancient tomb of RachelThey have built a ghetto wall;Rachel's weeping for her children,And "her children" means us all.But this city's strangulated,Rachel's children segregated.

David's people once instructedAll the world in righteousness;Once they spoke of truth and justice,Now they ravage and oppress.Nations, look at Bethlehem ,And speak out the truth to them.

THE TWELVE DAYS OF CHRISTMAS

On the first day of Christmas, Arik Sharon sent meAn uprooted olive tree.

On the second day of Christmas, Arik Sharon sent meTwo trampled dovesAnd an uprooted olive tree.

On the third day of Christmas, Arik Sharon sent meThree trench guns,Two trampled doves,And an uprooted olive tree.

On the fourth day of Christmas, Arik Sharon sent meFour falling bombs,Three trench guns,Two trampled doves,And an uprooted olive tree.

Sing, all ye people,Sing in indignation,Be with the citizens of Bethlehem ;Sing out for justice,Freedom from oppression.O come, let's not ignore it,O come, let's not ignore it,O come, let's not ignore it,Tell the world.

IN THE BLEAK MIDWINTER

In the bleak midwinter,Refugees made moan;Sharon stood like iron,Bush was like a stone.Tanks were rolling, tank on tank,Tank on tank,Through the camps of GazaAnd the West Bank .

How can we stop him,Ariel Sharon?Silence of the nationsLets him carry on.Where is there a wise manWho could do his part?Tell the world to stop himWith its heart.

THE OLIVE AND THE IDF (Israeli Army)

The olive and the IDFWhen they are both full-grown,Every olive tree on the West BankThe IDF cuts down.

O the rampaging of settlersAnd the rolling of the tanks;The grinding of the bulldozersAs the olives fall in ranks.

The olive bears a berryAs green as any grass;When the owners go to pick the fruitThey're not allowed to pass.

O the rampaging of settlersAnd the rolling of the tanks;The grinding of the bulldozersAs the olives fall in ranks.

This oppression bears a berryAs red as any blood,As the owners see their livelihoodsAll trampled into mud.

O the rampaging of settlers,And the rolling of the tanks;The grinding of the bulldozersAs the olives fall in ranks.

If you want to buy the olives,You'll find it very hard;To those that make it to checkpointsThe way outside is barred.

O the rampaging of settlers,And the rolling of the tanks;The grinding of the bulldozersAs the olives fall in ranks.

The olive and the IDF,When they are both full-grown,Every olive tree on the West BankThe IDF cuts down.

WE FOUR KINGS

FOUR KINGS TOGETHER

We four kings, we're called the Quartet; With a roadmap off we all set, No-one knowing where we're going, Or how far we can get.

CHORUS

O, map of wonder, map of light, Map of promises so bright, In three phases, through the mazes Guide us with no end in sight.

1ST KING

I'm King George, the USA man; And it goes according to plan; Fighting terror, righting error; After Iraq, Iran .

CHORUS

O, map of wonder, etc.

2ND KING

I this year am King of EU; My name's known to more than a few - Sarkozy; I and Tony Take from King George our cue.

CHORUS

O map of wonder, etc.

3RD KING

I'm King Putin, Muscovite Tzar, With this map I travel afar; I'm partaking in peace-making, Just like in Chechnya .

CHORUS

O map of wonder, etc.

4TH KING

I'm Ban Ki-Moon, head of UN; It makes laws again and again, But ignored is, for the sword is Mightier than the pen.

CHORUS

O map of wonder, etc..

FOUR KINGS TOGETHER

We four kings, we're all in a flap, For we've got ourselves in a trap - Stopped by trenches, walls and fences, Not marked upon the map.

CHORUS

O map of wonder, etc.

FOUR KINGS TOGETHER

We four kings, bewildered we are, For this map's not getting us far, Nowhere leading - for we're needing Not a map but a star.

CHORUS

O star of freedom, star of light, Star of peace with justice bright, Shining ever, they can never Target-bomb thy perfect light.

Israeli ambassador blasts London churchDecember 11, 2008 LONDON (JTA) -- Israel's ambassador to London added a diplomatic dimension to a row over anti-Israel carol singers at a central London church.

Two weeks ago, a group called “Jews for boycotting Israeli goods” performed at St. James's Church in Piccadilly with its own version of Christmas carols, in which it changed the words of the familiar carols to lyrics referring to Israel’s actions in Gaza and the West Bank.

The performance drew huge criticism, and on Wednesday, the Ambassador Ron Prosor told the Times: “It was appalling to see a church allow one of its most endearing seasonal traditions to be hijacked by hatred.”

He also attacked the lack of strong condemnation by the Church of England leadership. "Only the 'merry gentlemen' of Hamas and its fellow extremists will take any 'tidings of comfort and joy' from this event," he said. "In Bethlehem, even if Santa Claus is coming to town, when he gets there, he’ll be met with a frosty reception by Islamic extremists."

He added: “Unfortunately, the criticism from within the Church of England, that should have echoed with bold moral clarity, has instead sounded like a silent night, but far from holy.”

Prosor went on to attack the head of St. James's Church, saying, “It is saddening that Rev. Charles Hedley should have allowed the beautiful acoustics of his church to be abused to create such discord. If Hedley’s aim was to create harmony, he might have expressed a modicum of concern for the Israeli victims of terrorist violence.”

He also discussed the wider implications of the event. "Hedley's decision undermines the hard work that has taken place to improve relations between Christians, Muslims and Jews. He should understand that interfaith dialogue, tolerance and open-mindedness are the way forward to brotherly love, and not the interfaith ranting and raving of the 'carol service' at St. James's Piccadilly."